


This Man

by nerigby96



Category: Martin and Lewis
Genre: 1940s, Angst, Antisemitism, Blood and Injury, Developing Relationship, F/M, Guilt, Homophobia, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Masturbation, Period Typical Attitudes, Pining, Pre-Relationship, Religious Guilt, Sexual Content, Sharing a Bed, Violence, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:47:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26976088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerigby96/pseuds/nerigby96
Summary: December, 1945Jerry has an itch he can't quite scratch but wishes he could scratch it with his friend. Instead, this man may have to do.
Relationships: Jerry Lewis/Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis/Original Male Character(s), Jerry Lewis/Patti Lewis
Comments: 10
Kudos: 10





	This Man

**Author's Note:**

> TW: homophobic language/attitudes, antisemitism, blood, vomiting

It took him the whole morning to write the letter. Not because he didn’t want to, far from it. In fact, he’d looked forward to it all week. An hour at most he’d set aside to write a perfect letter to his perfect wife and his perfect son. He’d write everything beautifully for them, and she’d read it aloud even though he wouldn’t understand, so he’d still get to hear about everything Daddy was doing. Then he sat down to write, perched on the end of this tiny bed in this tiny room, knees cramped against the dresser he was using for a desk, and the words wouldn’t come. Something else did, though, and he figured after he had finished with that, the letter would write itself.

It didn’t.

Three times this morning Jerry had to work out the frustration in his lower half and fuck if it didn’t feel like he hadn’t got it all. It wasn’t as if it’d been a long time since he last had a hand with it. Last night, in fact, he’d got off beautifully in a bathroom stall, so quite frankly he didn’t see why his body couldn’t remember what his _brain_ could all too readily. He nibbled then chewed his pencil till it snapped off in his mouth. Luckily his teeth hadn’t made such an appearance last night. He chuckled to himself, crossed his legs, and at last finished the letter, tucking it away in an envelope before grabbing tissues and going to work again.

This last felt all right, and the afternoon was uncomfortable but not totally impossible, and once he was onstage and working and sweating and thrilling under the lights and the laughter, he felt pretty much back to normal. He sits now at the bar, drinking, and sees a big, mean-looking fella who glares unblinking at him. Jerry feels something bubble in his throat – _God_ it’d be a good line, he knows – but he wrestles the Idiot back into his cage and focuses on the pink drink in his glass.

He’s midway through his third Shirley Temple before he realises his mistake and has to beat feet to the bathroom. He makes it, relieves himself in an impressive jet, and he’s partway through washing his hands when the door opens. For a second, he thinks (hopes, maybe) it’s someone come to join him in a stall. He doesn’t worry that his rather active morning will put a damper on things. But when he looks up he sees the big fella from the bar and he opens his mouth but it’s already too late.

A week’s worth of pain for seconds of action, Jerry figures. The fella spits on him and goes, letting the door slam. Jerry wonders why he didn’t drag him over and shut it on his head. Finish the job. Almost yells it after him but has to vomit something green and red on to the floor, then finds himself convulsed with gulping laughter that sounds like sobs, although it might be the other way around. He twitches on the floor and tries to work out what it was. The Jewish thing or the queer thing? He didn’t wear a dress tonight and he doesn’t lisp when he mimes, so maybe the former. Or maybe he knows what Jerry got up to last night. Now he wishes he’d said something at the bar: “Looking’s okay but touching’ll cost ya.” And maybe he would’ve been hit but not this badly, and someone would have stopped him. Maybe. Maybe they would have let him get on with it.

Still, it could be worse.

Then the door opens again, and Jerry looks up at this other man, and he realises he’s already met him.

Last night he met him, though _met_ may be too strong a word. He was washing his hands when this man came in. They were alone, and then they were in a stall, and this man’s hand was in his pants. Jerry gasped and hid his mouth in this man’s shoulder, came with a jerk and shudder, and when this man had wiped his hand clean, he unzipped, and Jerry got on his knees. At the end of it, this man held his face and kissed him once and left. Neither said a word, and Jerry is not prepared for how soft and concerned his voice sounds now.

He bursts into tears, and this man holds him. He strokes his back and whispers, “I’m sorry, I know, _zeeskeit_ , I know” and this makes him cry harder. He hears the door open, hears this man say something hard and fast, and then his voice comes back again, “ _Shhhh_ , I know, come on, we have to go, come on,” and they’re up and walking, and Jerry’s legs won’t hold him, but this man’s arm will, firm around his waist, bearing him out of the bathroom, out of the club and on to the street, where it’s cold and he shivers, and this man takes off his coat and lets him wear it.

Jerry thinks it’s almost romantic and wants to say _Your cock was in my mouth twenty-four hours ago_ to ruin the mood, but he doesn’t. Instead, he says, “Thanks.”

This man pulls a face. “I’m an idiot. When he didn’t come out, I thought you were…”

Jerry looks at the ground.

“But I should've known. I’m sorry.”

Jerry shrugs.

“How badly hurt are you?”

He shrugs again. “My ribs hurt,” he says.

“Your poor face,” this man begins and looks away.

Jerry watches his face in profile, how he attempts to make it still. It’s sort of nice. He’s sort of handsome here, his breath misting in the dark. Jerry thinks he’d quite like it if this man would kiss him again. Maybe just kissing this time. He’s not sure. He’s still restless from this morning, feels like there’s an itch he just can’t scratch. It’s ridiculous, really – this whole situation. A part of him wants to give this man his coat back, say goodbye and walk to his hotel, curl up under the covers and sleep until it doesn’t hurt anymore. He almost laughs; he knows how long that sleep would be. Another part (it’s in his chest and twinging) likes this man so much already and wants to go somewhere with him so they can be alone, wants not to feel so lonesome, can’t understand how he _can_ feel so lonesome standing here with another person, wrapped in his coat. He pulls it closer around him and wishes it were another man’s.

“Is there somewhere you can go?” this man asks.

“Mm?”

“A-a friend, or – something?”

“A friend?” He thinks. He doesn’t have to think, really, but he makes it look like he is and tries not to smile at the mere thought of his _friend_. He nods. “He’s performing tonight – at the Havana-Madrid.”

This man visibly relaxes. “That’s not so far. I’ll walk you there.” And he does. He takes his coat back halfway – Jerry says he feels warmer now, and it’s true – and very little passes between them. He figures this man will be nice for a little while, and then they’ll part and never speak again. It’s okay. He’s not the first. But Jerry’s fingers itch and his chest feels tight and there’s a heat lower down and he thinks he wants to say thank you again to this man without words this time.

They stand on the sidewalk outside the club. Music drifts up. Singing. _Dean_ singing. Jerry’s legs have stopped working. His brain stutters and whirs, tries to figure out how to explain one hundred things to Dean when he knows his friend will be stuck on the first thing he sees.

“Him?” This man points at the poster, the one Jerry’s been staring at for what feels like three years.

Jerry nods. “He’s my friend.” He wants to rest his hand on the glass covering Dean’s lovely face, old nose intact, but doesn’t. He’s still shaking.

“‘Talk, dark and handsome voice’,” this man says. He chuckles. It’s a nice sound. Jerry wants to hear it breathed into his ear in a dark room. “Let’s go in.”

Jerry shakes his head.

“Why not? He’ll want to see you.”

He shakes his head again, and bites down hard on his bottom lip to stop himself saying yes, yes let’s go, let’s see Dean. It’s all he wants. But he doesn’t know what he’ll do if Dean gets a look at his face.

“Um,” he says instead.

“Michael,” this man says.

“Michael,” Jerry says. “Mikey.” He giggles. This man giggles too. That’s even nicer. Jerry says, “Can we go to your hotel?” and turns to face him.

This man looks at him, eyes soft – mouth soft, too, and Jerry wants to kiss it but stops himself.

“Sure,” this man says. Michael says.

They walk in silence, breath misting. Jerry’s ribs ache. His face throbs. He glances at Michael and thinks he’ll let this man do whatever he wants. It won’t be too bad, he’s sure. He’s got kind eyes, that soft mouth, and still there’s the memory of his gentle hand stroking. He twitches and coughs. Michael laughs softly, because he’s not stupid. He knows he’s got a trigger-happy kid with him, half-hard and a little desperate. A lot desperate. Maybe he knows already what Jerry will do for him. Maybe he knows he’ll do anything.

Jerry’s chest twinges. His legs feel weak, but each step closer to this man’s hotel strengthens his resolve. This time – like every time – he feels certain that after this man is finished with him, he won’t feel this feeling in his chest again. This time, when it’s done, whatever part of him he lost will be restored, and he’ll go to his hotel and sleep and wake up new and complete, and in the morning he’ll go see Dean and kiss him and he’ll see he’s different now and love him and want to keep him around, and he’ll go home to his wife and his baby and kiss them both and she’ll know he won’t ever hurt her, won’t ever betray her again, and he’ll know, this baby will know that he has the best daddy in the whole world, who did bad things sometimes but made up for them, he’s finished with them now, and wants to make everything right, and he’ll go back to work, and he’ll work hard and harder still and be the best at it, and maybe after a show he’ll meet somebody nice, but he won’t feel so lonesome now, and he’ll say no instead of yes and sleep alone with no nightmares, and years from now he’ll think about this man who touched him in a bathroom stall and later took him to his hotel room and silently he’ll thank him for helping him get better, for being the last, for sending him back to his friend and his wife and his baby, and showing him that’s all he needed after all.

“Did you hear me?”

“Oh.” Jerry flushes. He looks at Michael and shakes his head. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay, _zeeskeit_ ,” he says. Jerry feels himself glow at this – the second time tonight he’s called him that. He thinks he wouldn’t mind being called that in the dark.

“You call all the boys you meet that?” he can’t stop himself from asking.

Michael grins. “Only the Jewish ones.” He mounts the steps outside the hotel. “Come on.”

Jerry follows him in and has to take a minute in the foyer. It’s a grand place, that’s for sure. Too rich for Jerry’s blood – or Dean’s or Sonny’s or anyone he’s ever met in his life. He figures he’d have to save for a month to afford a night here, and even that would be without sending money home to Patti and Gary, as well as forgoing his milkshakes. _Dean would buy them for me_ , he thinks, but still he can’t come close to imagining a world where he could afford such a hotel.

“Close your mouth,” Michael says. “Time enough for that later.”

Jerry sticks out his tongue and skips over to the elevator. He makes a crack about riding it up and down that makes Michael kiss his neck once the doors close. The operator pretends not to notice, and once they reach his floor, Michael tips him generously.

Jerry glances over his shoulder.

“Don’t worry about him, he’s seen worse.” Michael puts an arm around him. “I like to keep him on his toes.”

The room – the suite, in fact – is huge and plush and so lovely Jerry thinks he could quite happily live here. It’s bigger than the apartment he shares with Patti. He almost wants to rush out, buy a camera, and snap pictures frantically and save them somewhere, so years from now he’ll have proof he was ever here. He rushes around the room, touches everything, exclaiming curiously, excitedly, madly over ordinary things, which are surprisingly difficult to find in such a lavish space, but he manages. The light switch he plays with for a good minute before Michael steers him into the bedroom and closes the door.

The bed could sleep ten and before he can stop him, the Idiot crows: “You expecting company?”

Michael laughs. “Is a free show part of this?” he asks.

Jerry rolls his eyes. “The show comes later. This is just the preshow.”

“Like foreplay?” Michael takes off his coat.

Jerry thinks about this. “I guess.” He’s never had a chance to play like this before and now that he thinks of it, he likes it.

“Will you do your Sinatra bit for me?”

Jerry nods and wraps his arms around his neck. He pushes himself against his hip a little and waits. Michael’s hands come to his waist. He kisses Jerry’s cheek and moves him back a step.

“Slow down,” he says.

Jerry doesn’t think he can but he wants so badly for this man to like him that he drops his arms, twists his fingers together and waits.

“Here,” Michael says, and takes him to the bed. Jerry breaths hard and lets himself be led by the hand, lets Michael push him gently on to the mattress, look down kindly at him and touch his face. “You poor thing,” he whispers, and kisses Jerry’s cheeks. He’s still standing, and because Jerry knows what that means he reaches for his belt. Michael moves back. “I said slow down.” He strokes his cheek. “We’ve got all night.”

Jerry wants to say that they didn’t exactly go slow last night, but he bites his lip again and nods, shifting uncomfortably on the bed.

“You really want I should do Sinatra?”

“Will you?”

Jerry nods, and Michael goes back into the living room, leaving the door open. Jerry creeps over and watches him at the phonograph. He slips a record on to the turntable and delicately places the needle. Jerry waits. He wants to ask Michael to hold on. _Slow down_ , he wants to say, echo his own instruction, but he can’t. He can’t make his voice work. Good thing, too. Good thing he only mimes. He remembers when he had to emcee, how he’d stammered and wanted to vomit right into the laps of the folks ringside. And then Dean’s voice rang out, and he was there, and they were together, and then the strings fill the room and it’s ‘If I Loved You’ and Jerry knows it well, thank God, and he sucks in his cheeks and gives the performance of his life and he wishes he had given it for Dean.

He wishes he were giving this to Dean.

The song ends, and Michael claps, and Jerry smooths his hair and touches the tip of his tongue to his top lip. Then Michael puts away the record and takes Jerry back into the bedroom, this time sitting with him on the bed.

“Okay,” he says. “Before we do anything else, we need to be honest with each other.”

“Huh?” Jerry blinks at him. He’s looking at his mouth and thinking about the trail of hair on his stomach. He had muscles there, too, Jerry thinks, but he wasn’t paying much attention to that body part. He remembers after having to pick a hair from his tongue and this man not minding at all.

“Names,” he says. “You know mine and I know yours, but our real ones.”

Jerry narrows his eyes. “You first.”

“Ari Cohen,” he says and sighs like the weight of the world’s on his shoulders. “Perhaps the most aggressively Jewish name my parents could have given me.”

Jerry snorts.

“I know! A name like that and a _feygele_ too?” He pulls a face. “I never stood a chance. Least I could do was change the name.”

“Michael’s nice,” Jerry says.

“I think so too.” He taps him lightly on the shoulder. “You?”

“Joseph Levitch.”

“People call you Joey?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes.”

“Can I call you that?”

Jerry startles himself by blushing. It’s something to do with how his eyes soften, how he tilts his head and looks at his face, closely without prying. How those five words imply they’re going to see each other after tonight, even if he doesn’t mean it. It’s nice.

He nods.

Ari nudges him. “I like you, Joey.”

Jerry can’t speak. He nods and shuffles close and God his pants are too tight and he wants Ari to help him so he takes his hand and puts it on his crotch.

“Whoa, hold on!”

“Can you do like you did before?” he asks and can’t believe he’s asking.

“Is that what you want?”

“I thought…” He lets go and crosses his legs. “You let me come up, so…”

“Yes, I did.” He sighs and scratches his head. “Listen. I’ve never done this before.”

Jerry feels his eyes bugging.

“Not that.” Ari rubs his face. “I mean – we had fun last night.”

Jerry nods.

“You’ve had a rough night. This might be too much for you again.”

He shakes his head and puts his arms around Ari’s neck and tries to climb into his lap. His ribs protest and he flinches, grunting, and Ari helps him sit again. “See?” he says. “You’re already hurt. You'll only hurt more.”

“Then don’t hurt me,” Jerry says and wonders if maybe Ari _wants_ to hurt him. Wonders if he would let him.

“Joey,” he says, smiling at how Jerry’s resolve visibly crumbles. “Someone hurt you. And I’m upset for you. Maybe you don’t want to think about it. Maybe you want to distract yourself. That’s fine. But this isn’t the way.”

Jerry’s trembling and he gets to his feet, fists clenched and voice rising as he speaks: “Then why let me come here and touch me in the elevator and bring me to your bedroom and talk about foreplay and everything?”

Ari stares at him. For a horrible moment Jerry thinks he might cry. Then he stares at the floor and looks so ashamed that Jerry wants to cry instead. He wants to get on his knees and beg and say he’ll do anything, anything, just don’t be sad, I’m sorry. He wants to leave, just go, down the stairs so he doesn’t have to see whatever’s on that operator's face, and never ever come back here. He doesn’t know what he wants. So he knuckles his eyes like a child and says, “What’s a good distraction?”

Ari asks him about his childhood, listens to the stories about aunt after aunt after _fat_ aunt and laughs because Jerry makes these stories funny, the funniest he’s ever heard. He listens to stories about Grandma Sarah – only the nice ones – and Jerry waxes lyrical about his parents and especially his father and how talented and brilliant he is, how much he looks up to him. He can’t wait, he says, for them to see him perform. _They haven’t?_ Ari asks. _They will_ Jerry says and adds that he wants it to be perfect, so when he’s perfect, he’ll invite them, and moves on before Ari can say something else.

Then Ari talks, tells Jerry about being fifteen years old and kissing his best friend one night at his house. They’d been invited for Shabbat dinner and after, up in his room, this boy had stuck his tongue a little too far down his throat. Ari didn’t mind; he tasted of challah and something else he couldn’t name and he felt like they kissed all night but it was only for a minute and they never spoke of it again. _Why not?_ Jerry asks. _Would you?_ Ari says and Jerry thinks he might, might screech something inappropriate about it in front of both families, in front of a Rabbi even, after having to endure weeks of silence, but instead he shakes his head.

They talk about a lot of things, sitting cross-legged on the bed. Ari asks him about his act, and Jerry says he likes that he doesn’t have to speak because his voice squeaks and he gets everything wrong. He likes dressing up too, he says.

“You dress up sometimes?”

Jerry nods.

“In what?”

“Dresses,” he says and tells Ari about Lonnie Brown helping him with that.

Jerry, after less than a second’s hesitation, asks if Ari might like to see him in a dress sometime. He doesn’t clarify whether he means at a show. Ari smiles and looks at him very closely. “Yes,” he says, “I think I might.” And it makes Jerry unspeakably happy that this man is still pretending that this won’t be the last time they see each other.

After hours of this, Jerry yawns, and Ari takes off his clothes. Jerry copies and climbs under the sheets as Ari switches off the light and joins him. When nothing happens, he reaches out to touch him, not quite below the waist but almost, and Ari takes his hand and holds it, whispers nice things, calls him _zeeskeit_ again, and then he’s falling asleep.

It takes him a little while to realise that he’s dreaming.

In the dream, they’re the same age. Jerry can’t tell at first if they’re grownups or kids, but whichever it is, his friend is still handsome and strong and unembarrassed, stripping off fluidly like he’s made of water and the river is his home. He leaps, draws up his knees to embrace them and then silently explodes in the water like the memory of a cannonball. He re-emerges, curls sodden and glistening, swiping a hand over his face and blinking, searching for Jerry, who smiles sheepishly and strips down to his underwear, slips off the rocks into the gently flowing water, deceptively cold. He cries out, and his friend swims closer, laughing, eyes bright and water dripping from his nose and Jerry doesn’t know what he wants but his friend does, and takes his hands and dips under the water, swims up beneath and boosts him, higher and higher, so he’s standing on his shoulders. Jerry slips and yells and swallows two lungfuls of water, coughs it deliberately in his friend’s face. He glowers, a twinkle in his eye, and ducks Jerry twice, then swims beneath again and boosts him. His feet are stronger now; his friend holds his hands, instructs, and Jerry leaps into the air and splashes down, and then again and again, and then he executes a perfect somersault, and when he surfaces his friend cheers and hugs him, and exhausted they retreat to the bank, Jerry looking pointedly away from his friend’s sleek, tan nakedness. He looks instead at the trees, at the light spangling on the water. He spreads his fingers in the grass and at last chances a look at his friend. His friend, who is looking right at him and smiling. His friend, who reaches over and rests his right hand on Jerry’s waist, cool with water and summer breeze, and rippled with gooseflesh. In the dream, his friend’s pinkie finger is straight, and Jerry thinks they must both be sixteen years old. In the dream, the pad of his friend’s huge calloused thumb slips along the waistband of his shorts. And in the dream, Jerry is brave, braver than he’s ever been awake, because he reaches up and touches his friend’s cheek, his hair, musses it almost lazily, so relaxed he could melt into the ground, feels diamond droplets dappling his face. His friend smiles, and Jerry can’t look at that smile yet. Instead, he looks beyond the glistening curly head at the sky, the last wisps of white clouds dispersing into blue. There’s a little bird above his head, and Jerry keeps his eyes on it as his friend’s hand moves.

Jerry wakes hot and sticky and tangled in the sheets. He realises that there’s a man beside him but not the right one. He snores and shifts and settles. When everything’s quiet again, Jerry extricates himself and wobbles to the bathroom. It must be almost noon – the room’s so bright, too bright. He doesn’t want to see this fancy bedroom. The bathroom, too, is almost unbelievable, bigger than his hotel room. He undresses. He wants to take a shower but he’ll be too noisy, so instead he fills the sink and soaks his underwear, cleans himself up and drops the wadded tissues into the toilet, sniffing and wiping his face with the back of his hand.


End file.
